Ms. Calabrese
has been featured
on many national popular
television programs
such as
The Oprah Winfrey Show,
CBS Sunday Morning News
and NBC’s
The Today Show, plus
featured in Chicago’s
two largest newspapers
the Chicago Tribune
and Chicago Sun-Times.
She has also been honored
with the First Annual
Raw and Living Foods
Golden Branch Award
in 2002
for introducing the idea
of raw and living foods
to the greatest number
of people
in mainstream society.

Her positive attitude
and boundless energy
have helped her maintain
the longest operating
raw food restaurant
in the United States.
Karyn’s passion
for clean living
and her love of life are
her greatest motivations.
Thirty years ago,
she used raw foods
and detoxification
to heal herself of allergies,
skin problems, fatigue,
and many other
physical ailments
and has since been
a radiant example
of the incredible benefits
of plant-based living.

Let’s head now to Karyn’s
Inner Beauty Center
in Chicago, Illinois
to meet the vibrant
and inspirational
Ms. Karen Calabrese.
She begins our conversation
by talking about her motto:
“If you don’t
take care of your body,
where are you going
to live?”

People have
so many excuses
why they can’t be healthy:
“It costs too much,”
“It’s too far away,”
“It’s too difficult,”
“It’s too hard,”
“I don’t have the time.”
You have
a myriad of excuses why
you can’t take care of
the most magnificent
and the best thing
you’ll ever be given
in your life, right?
So, my statement is
helping people to remember
that if you don’t take care
of the most magnificent
thing you’ll ever be given,
you’ll have no place to live.

It doesn’t matter
how much money you have.
It doesn’t matter
how great your job,
your children,
your home, your spouse.
It doesn’t matter.
If you don’t have
your health –
you have nothing.
So, why not make that
the number one focus
in your life, and then
it’s like a domino effect.
Everything else
falls into place.

I haven’t always
had this lifestyle.
I mean, I’ve had
a very difficult childhood.
But because
I saved my money,
worked three jobs,
and bought
a wheatgrass machine
and started growing it
hydroponically,
I believe that’s why
I am where I am today.
I put my money into me.
The best thing
that I could invest in
and I’ve got everything
I want now.

With the unfortunate
passing of her mother
at age 48,
grandmother at 50, and
great-grandmother at 60
due to health problems,
Ms. Calabrese
became determined
not to repeat this
sad family history, but
to create a healthful future
for herself.

All the women in my family
died overweight,
and very young.
I was just 64, two days ago,
and I don’t know
what illness is;
I don’t know of being tired,
it just isn’t
a part of my world
or my vocabulary.
And I directly relate that
to the lifestyle
that I have evolved into.
So because
I was a very sickly child
and a sick young adult –
I had every allergy
known to man,
I had terrible skin,
I had PMS, I was
constipated all the time –
my mother had introduced
to me to vegetable juicing.

So I kind of started
the vegetable juicing.
And the more I did,
the more I wanted to learn,
because I believe
that we intuitively know
what’s right for ourselves;
we’re born
knowing from God
telling us how to
take care of our bodies.
We’ve just forgotten
because the world
is so bizarre, and there’re
so many bizarre things
out there
to attract your attention.
So, as I started
cleansing my body
with the vegetable juices,
I developed a natural
repulsion to red meat.

And once again,
I don’t believe it’s
a natural human instinct
to eat dead flesh.
I think
it’s a learned experience,
and I think
everybody does it
so it feels comfortable.
But I don’t think it’s
natural to human beings.
And so, my body evolved
into being a vegan.
I haven’t had meat, fish,
chicken or dairy
42 years now, and
it has served me very well.
I don’t get sick,
I don’t get tired,
I went through menopause
with no symptoms,
I’ve got the same body
I had at 16,
and I work 16 hours a day,
6 days a week at 64.

What secrets
has Karyn Calabrese
discovered
along her incredible path
of self-healing?
Let’s hear her thoughts
on the body’s amazing
ability to regenerate itself
to make new cells
and new tissues.

You know the beauty of it is,
the way we were created,
we are self-regenerating
organism.
We get new cells
every 7 years,
we get new tissue
every 3 months –
so the body is
in an ongoing process
of regenerating itself.
The reason that it doesn’t,
is it gets too much
of the wrong stuff.

I mean even if
you’re eating perfectly,
we are living in a world
where the oxygen levels
are in the teens.
When God created us,
the oxygen levels
were at 38%.
After
the industrial revolution,
they were down to 22%.
We are living in the teens
in the oxygen levels
in our atmosphere.
All cancer cells,
all viruses are anaerobic;
they can’t live in an
oxygenated environment.

So not only people,
they’re not getting it
from their air
and the life force
that we were meant
to be in the breath work.
They’re not getting it
from their foods.
So what I’ve learned,
and what I teach is
that you can help the body
to regenerate itself,
and get over anything.
People come
to my classes with
all types of challenges.
So for me, the main tenant
that I follow,
yes, I’m a vegan,
yes, I’m a raw foodist,
but I cleanse and detoxify
my body a minimum
of 4 times a year.

Ms. Calabrese
has constructed
a powerful 4-week
detox program called
“Nature’s Healing System”
that highlights
life-changing information
such as proper nutrition
and holistic therapies.
Let’s listen to
a few testimonials
from her program.

Sometimes during the fast,
you get that glimpse
of you’re like in a totally
different dimension,
you feel that you are
more than your body,
you feel that
you are a spiritual being.

The first day of my fast,
when everything just kind of
came all of a sudden.
I got the energy, the skin
just really started glowing.

On my fourth day of fasting,
I was very intuitive
and very peaceful.

Now I haven’t eaten meat
in 42 years, I don’t drink,
smoke, or do drugs,
I pray and meditate
every day of my life,
and I detox 4 times a year.
And people say, “Well,
you live that lifestyle, Karyn,
why would you detox?”

I drive behind buses,
I’m taking in chemicals.
I get my clothes
dry-cleaned;
I’m taking in chemicals
through my skin.
The skin is the largest
eliminative organ
on the body,
and absorption, so
you taking in chemicals.
So for me, taking the time
to break down
those layers of toxicity,
taking the time
to clean out my body
times a year,
to help my body
regenerate itself,
to me, is the answer.

And if you check
my website, you’ll see
women and men
and children.
We’ve had people with
type II diabetes reverse.
We’ve had people
with fibromyalgia,
with fibroids,
with tumors, with cancer,
endometriosis;
it doesn’t matter the name.
Because any challenge
you receive,
your body is just trying
to shake you awake
and say, “Excuse me,
I’ve got too much
of the wrong thing
and not enough
of the right thing.”

We are created
in Divine perfection,
but we get these
little challenges so that
we learn to keep learning
and keep moving forward.
Because even if
you became a vegan today,
you’re still a product
of all the years
that you weren’t
You can hold medications
and even animal products
in your body for years
and years and years.
So cleaning the body out,
taking the time to do that,
is to me
the most important thing.

Last year
PETA’s Sexist Vegetarian
over 50 was Mimi Kirk
who won at age 71,
as a raw vegan.
And recently Sunny,
the supermodel, shared
that what kept her
healthy and beautiful
at 70 is a raw vegan diet.
You are over 60,
and look like
a supermodel yourself.
Why is being a vegan
so effective at keeping one
young and vivacious?
Is this the fountain of youth
everyone has been
searching for?

Well, you see those cells
that I talked about
regenerating themselves,
if they got too much
of the wrong materials –
and that’s
your animal products
and your dairy products,
I call them cow secretions
and dead flesh –
if you’re taking that in,
the body has to work so hard
to break them down
because
we weren’t designed
to take these things in.

I mean the cow secretions
was created for one thing,
a baby calf, right,
an animal that’s meant
to grow a 1,000 pounds
the first year of its life,
and everybody wonders
why they’re getting
larger and larger.
So being a vegan is
definitely, exceptionally,
helpful in keeping the clock
going back, because
the human body’s meant
to last
several hundred years.
This dying off
at 50, 60, 70, and 80
is a travesty because
our bodies are meant
to last almost indefinitely
if you’re getting new cells
regularly and tissue.

So the vegan diet
does support that
because your body
isn’t breaking down
all of that toxicity.
So instead of spending
all this time to regenerate,
it’s spending its time
breaking down the toxicity.
When you don’t have
so much toxicity,
it can spend more time
regenerating.

I always say I’m not
teaching anything special,
and I got
the best business partner
on the planet – God.
Because
I’m just helping you
to step back into His plan
and there’s no way
it can’t work.
Cause and effect, that’s
what rules the universe,
cause and effect.

And so, if you start
feeding your body
the way it was meant to,
the raw living foods,
the vegan foods that
was intended to take in,
it changes your attitude.
It changes everything.
It changes your connection,
not only with the planet
and the universe, but
the people around you.
I like to make the little joke,
that button
that says “no war,”
if you put it on
and stand in the mirror
and put it on,
it says “on raw.”

For more information
on Karen Calabrese
and staying healthy
and forever young
through veganism
and detoxing,
please visit:
www.KarynRaw.com

Enlightened viewers,
thank you
for spending time with us
on this week’s
energizing edition of
Vegetarian Elite.
Please join us next week
for part 2 of our
fascinating interview
with vegan, raw food
pioneer Karen Calabrese.
Coming up next is
Between Master
and Disciples.
May universal love fill
your mind, body, and soul.

I tried raw for a week;
it just drove me crazy,

Because
you can’t just eat raw.
That’s a misconception;
you can’t go
from A to Z overnight.

Thank you for saying that.
Because
I felt like such a failure.

No, no, no, and that’s
the problem with all diets,
people expect to go
from A to Z. It’s a process.

Welcome back,
lively viewers,
to part 2 of our interview
with the beautiful
and extraordinary
Ms. Karyn Calabrese.
As we found out in part 1,
Ms. Calabrese has been
nationally recognized
for her innovative work
in the current raw
and vegan food evolution,
helping thousands
of individuals create
healthier, happier lives
for themselves.
On today’s show, we’ll
learn of Ms. Calabrese’s
own A-Z journey which
started about 30 years ago
when her mother
bought her a juice maker.

This intuitively sparked
her search for self-healing,
which led her
to discover the works
of famous nutritionist
Dr. Ann Wigmore.
Later on in 1985,
she established
her own greenhouse called
“Karyn’s Fresh Corner,”
where she grew her own
wheatgrass and sprouts.
Seven years after,
she opened
one of the United States’
first raw foods eateries,
which is still thriving today
as an incredible raw,
vegan gourmet restaurant
plus café.

For those who preferred
to keep cooked food
in their diet,
Ms. Calabrese
considerately opened an
amazing vegan restaurant,
aptly named,
“Karyn’s Cooked.”
Then due to its popularity,
she opened her third
restaurant in early 2010,
named “Karyn’s on Greens”
described as a
“contemporary American
vegan restaurant
free of meat, seafood,
poultry and dairy –
a gateway to veganism.”

Truly, Karyn’s vegan
entrepreneurial ship
knows no bounds!
Another way
Karyn has decided
to help people achieve
their dietary goals is
with “Karyn’s at Home,”
where customers can
pre-order a week’s worth
of raw or cooked
vegan cuisine
and have it delivered
right to their doorstep!
Scrumptious
meatless meals include
stuffed mushrooms,
roasted veggie sandwich,
mashed sweet potatoes,
chocolate mousse
and blueberry cheesecake.
WOW – sign me up!

Every month Karyn’s
Inner Beauty Center
offers classes and events
to help individuals
along their path
towards wellness.
Movie nights include
important documentaries
such as “Food, Inc.”
or “Meet Your Meat;”
yoga and meditation classes,
raw food preparation
classes plus seminars
by well-known experts
in the health
and wellness industry.

So let’s return now
to our in-depth interview
with Ms. Karyn Calabrese
at her holistic
healing center, “Karyn’s
Inner Beauty Center,”
located in Chicago,
Illinois, USA.

I really
started all this for me,
and the beauty of it is,
I’m able to share it
with other people.
I do free information
seminars twice a month.
I hold them here
in my Wellness Center.
I speak for 2 or 3 hours;
people can come and
ask me all the questions
they want.
I have a lot of this
on YouTube.
I answer the calling –
any time somebody
asked me to come
and speak and talk,
you’ll see that
I’m right there because
I believe that I’ve been
given a mission to do.

And so I think
it’s educating the public,
because once again,
we all know what’s right,
we’ve just forgotten.
So when you help people
uncover those layers,
you don’t have to
talk anybody into anything,
you don’t have to
convince anybody
of anything,
you just have to
wake them up a little bit,
and they jump
on themselves.

Karyn has said the reason
traditional diets don’t work
is because people expect
instant results,
whereas her philosophy
is to take the transition
step by step, according to
your body’s needs.

I think
the best recommendation
that I could make is
you don’t go from A-Z
overnight. It’s a process.
People tend to think, or
they’ll hear me speak today,
“Oh I need to do that.”
And then they may try it
for a day or two
and they can’t succeed,
“Oh, I can’t do it.”
And so to find
comfortable baby steps
for yourself so that
you can reward yourself
along the way.
Make comfortable goals,
don’t try to
go from A-Z overnight,
and be kind to yourself.
Don’t judge yourself,
don’t put yourself down.

Find a comfortable journey
for yourself, and find
a comfortable group
that believes in
and feels the way
that you do that
you’re comfortable with.
And take baby steps.
Find steps that work for you.
Find something
that works for you,
and then after that’s worked
for a week or two, say,
“Okay, now I’m going
to try something else.”

And you build on it,
because no other endeavor
in our lives
do we hear at once
and expect to get it.
You don’t hear
one lecture on law
and you’re a lawyer,
you don’t want to hear
one lecture on math and
you’re a mathematician.
It is a process.
And it’s the same thing
with lifestyle.
You have to allow yourself
the process.

Ms. Calabrese
shared with us of some
of the success stories
she has met with
in her work.

In the 1800’s,
the only people that
died from heart disease
were the rich people,
because they were
the only ones
that could afford
to eat meat all the time.
The older guy
who was 87 I spoke of.
They were ready
to amputate his toe
from diabetes and
he took my detox class
and it healed.

I had a woman
with fibromyalgia.
She could barely walk.
She can run up the steps
and went back and
got her master’s degree.
I’m working with
a young man right now
with tumors,
given six months to live.
Eight years later,
he’s still doing fine.
And I believe once again,
that’s the detox classes
that I teach.

If you aren’t able to take
one of Ms. Calabrese’s
effective detox courses,
then you may want to
read her newly published
book called
“Soak Your Nuts,”
which details
her cleansing program
and provides much more
fascinating information
on healthy living.

The title “Soak Your Nuts”
refers to the best way
to eat nuts and most nuts
are wonderful source
of calcium and protein.
Everybody worries about
their calcium and protein
when they give up
the animals.
I always joke and say,
nobody worries about it
when they’re
eating garbage,
but when they come
into the healthy world,
“Where am I
getting my protein?”
“Where am I
getting my calcium?”
So, nuts are
a wonderful source
of protein and calcium.

And if you soak them
before you eat them,
you break down
the enzyme inhibitors,
you break down the fats
and they’re easier to digest.
We have seven doctors
that have given me
a testimonial
for the process that I teach.
I love my process
of detoxification,
but I don’t believe
mine is the only way.
I believe
there are many roads
to the top of the mountain.
So if your viewers
find somebody
that resonates with them,
a book, a person, a class,
whatever, as long as
you take the time
to clean the body out
four times a year,
you’re going
to get results beyond
your wildest dreams.

Ms. Calabrese’
reminds people
to follow their intuition.

Well, I think
that leading by example
is the best way to
get people into your camp.
And being
a gentle proponent
of what you believe in.
I don’t believe in judgment
of anybody’s choices.
In fact I just opened
a cooked vegan
restaurant downtown.
It says: “There is
no judgment here,
no right or wrong,
or good or bad,
or yes or no, just a chance
for an Earth-friendly
experience.”

Would I love everybody
to be a vegan?
Absolutely! By being
a loving proponent
of what you believe in,
by living by example,
I think is the best way
to become what
people look to as a leader.
But I’m certainly
not a leader.
I like to tell people that
we all intuitively know
what’s right.
We’ve just forgotten.

Karyn’s loving
and compassionate heart
naturally extends to our
animal co-inhabitants.
She has a deep sensitivity
to the plight of any animal
who is being abused
and mistreated
and willingly contributes
her time and finances
in order to do
what she can to help
alleviate their suffering.

Yes, I definitely have
a strong love of animals.
When the trucks go by with
the pigs and cows in them,
I say a prayer
and my heart cries, because
I feel so sad for them.
I don’t even like watching
the horses with the carts
go by, drawing
the people around.
I don’t like going to the zoo.
I do belong to PAWS.
I do a lot of fundraising
with them.
But there is also a small
group here in Chicago
called Chicagoland
Rescue for Dogs.
And my son
who passed away
three years ago
was an animal lover, too.
So I do fundraising for them.
Like my birthday this year,
rather than give me gifts,
I asked people to
make donations to them.

A very selfless request
indeed!
Since leading
a vegan lifestyle
is the best way
to save animals lives,
let’s find out about
Ms. Calabrese’s
latest vegan ventures
and how she plans
to make her
raw and vegan foods
even more accessible
throughout the world.

I want to start
streaming my classes
all over the world.
And we’re building
a professional kitchen
in there, so I’m going
to start teaching food,
cooked vegan
and raw vegan,
where people will
be able to type me up
on their computers
and pull me up and
make food in their kitchen
with me.

So yes, we’ll want people
to come to the class.
We are going to do
a cooking certification
classes for people
who want to do
something with it,
with their livelihoods.
But I want the person
at home
to be able to dial me up
on the computer and
do classes with me also.
So that’s a huge project.

We have started
a meals-at-home program,
where people can order
a week’s worth of food
from the cooked vegan
or the raw vegan,
and we actually ship it
around the country.
So we’re doing that;
it’s in its infancy stages,
and I am working with
some manufacturers
about getting
some of my food out
in more in the mainstream
supermarkets and things.
Because the more
mainstream you make it,
the more people
you’re going to attract.
So, it’s about finding
bridges and transitions
for people,
that’s what I’m all about.
I’m not about absolutes
and perfection,
it’s about bridges.

The beauty of the way
my life lives is, as soon as
things start to get completed,
more visions come to me.
So I don’t think
I’m ever going to retire;
I don’t think
I’m ever going to stop;
I just see myself growing
with the needs that are
needed for the planet.

Our sincere gratitude,
Ms. Karyn Calabrese,
for sharing your
precious time with us, and
for your incredible work
in helping individuals
smoothly transition into
the Earth-, health-,
and animal-saving
plant-based lifestyle.
Your many ventures,
including
Karyn’s Raw Café,
Karyn’s Vegan Cooked
Gourmet Vegan Restaurant,
Karyn’s at Home,
Karyn’s Detox Program,
and the upcoming Karyn
online cooking classes
are an amazing array
of loving offerings!
We wish you
all the best luck
to continue expanding
your raw and vegan world,
with Heaven’s
abundant blessings.

Fabulous viewers,
thanks for being with us
today for our conclusion
of our informative program
featuring raw, vegan food
pioneer Karyn Calabrese.
Coming up next is
Between Master
and Disciples.
May Divine grace lead you
on the path of peace
and brotherly love.

For more information
on Karyn Calabrese
and staying healthy
and forever young
through veganism
and detoxing,
please visit:
www.KarynRaw.com